Shail, Robert, British Film Directors

BRITISH FILM DIRECTORS INTERNATIONAL FILM DIRECTOrs Series Editor: Robert Shail This series of reference guides covers the key film directors of a particular nation or continent. Each volume introduces the work of 100 contemporary and historically important figures, with entries arranged in alphabetical order as an A–Z. The Introduction to each volume sets out the existing context in relation to the study of the national cinema in question, and the place of the film director within the given production/cultural context. Each entry includes both a select bibliography and a complete filmography, and an index of film titles is provided for easy cross-referencing. BRITISH FILM DIRECTORS A CRITI Robert Shail British national cinema has produced an exceptional track record of innovative, ca creative and internationally recognised filmmakers, amongst them Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and David Lean. This tradition continues today with L GUIDE the work of directors as diverse as Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. This concise, authoritative volume analyses critically the work of 100 British directors, from the innovators of the silent period to contemporary auteurs. An introduction places the individual entries in context and examines the role and status of the director within British film production. Balancing academic rigour ROBE with accessibility, British Film Directors provides an indispensable reference source for film students at all levels, as well as for the general cinema enthusiast. R Key Features T SHAIL • A complete list of each director’s British feature films • Suggested further reading on each filmmaker • A comprehensive career overview, including biographical information and an assessment of the director’s current critical standing Robert Shail is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wales Lampeter. As well as publishing work on stardom and gender in British films, he was a contributor to The Cinema of Michael Powell (eds Christie and Moor) and to the British Film Institute’s online guide to British cinema. He is General Editor of Edinburgh University Press’s International Film Directors series. BRITISH FILM DIRECTORS A CRITIcaL GUIDE isbn 978 0 7486 2231 3 Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh E eh8 9lf dinburgh ROBERT SHAIL www.eup.ed.ac.uk Cover Design: Barrie Tullett Cover Photograph: © Royalty-Free/Corbis ShailNewFinal.indd 1 22/3/07 22:08:58 British Film Directors British Film Directors A Critical Guide Robert Shail Edinburgh University Press # Robert Shail, 2007 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11 on 13 Ehrhardt by Iolaire Typesetting, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 2230 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 2231 3 (paperback) The right of Robert Shail to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements vii Illustrations ix Introduction 1 British Film Directors 11 British Feature Film Titles Cited 219 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the University of Wales, Lampeter for granting me research leave in which to complete this book and all of my colleagues in the Department of Film and Media for their support and patience in my absence. Its completion was also assisted by a grant from the University’s Research Investment Fund. Many thanks to Edinburgh University Press, especially Sarah Edwards, for their support and to the Kobal Collection for supplying the photographs used. My particular thanks go to Steve Gerrard, who acted as my research assistant on this project, and to my wife, Cerri, for proofreading, indexing and generally putting up with me. Illustrations The following illustrations are provided as follows: Lindsay Anderson courtesy of: The Kobal Collection 15 Stephen Frears courtesy of: WDR/RMF/MIDA/Diaphana/ BBC/The Kobal Collection/Moseley, Melissa 71 Alfred Hitchcock courtesy of: The Kobal Collection 98 Derek Jarman courtesy of: The Kobal Collection 107 David Lean courtesy of: Columbia/The Kobal Collection 128 Sally Potter courtesy of: Working Title/Studio Canal/ Adventure Pic/The Kobal Collection/Majoli, A. 166 Michael Powell courtesy of: Archers/London Films/ British Lion/The Kobal Collection 168 Ken Russell courtesy of: The Kobal Collection 187 John Schlesinger courtesy of: The Kobal Collection 193 Michael Winterbottom courtesy of: Universal Pics Int./ BBC/The Kobal Collection 214 Introduction . consequently it is virtually impossible – despite the wealth of talent and occasional achievements of outstanding quality – to find a British film- making career that has the fullness of that of, say, Jean Renoir or Howard Hawks.1 Roy Armes, A Critical History of British Cinema There is little doubt that, in cinematic terms, we are living in the age of the director. A quick glance at the film pages in any of the national British broadsheet newspapers easily confirms this. The majority of reviews, even of mainstream commercial films, will make specific reference to the film’s director and suggest how this film conforms or deviates from the established pattern of their work. Advertisements for the latest releases will often play heavily on the director’s name and audiences are now familiar with opening credits which frequently include the claim that this is a film ‘by’ said director. Such status is afforded to even first-time directors or those with little interest in the artistic possibilities of the medium. The notion of the director as the key figure in the creative process of film-making, to the exclusion of other individuals or wider contextual factors, appears to be broadly established both as a critical mode and a marketing tool. This development in film culture might usefully be dated from the arrival of the auteur theory in the late 1950s, a product of the young critics at the magazine Cahier du Cinema.2 In claiming full artistic status for the modern era’s most popular entertainment, they elevated the role of the director to become the equivalent of a painter, sculptor or poet. This individual was a visionary who could impose their own personal vision on even the most mundane commercial chore and thereby transform it into a work of art. Although the concept of an ‘artist’s film’ predated the Cahier critics by a good forty years, it was a term that had been applied largely to the sphere of the European modernist avant-garde. Prior to the appear- ance of the auteur theory, very few mainstream directors had been afforded anything like this status, either from audiences or critics. Alfred 2 introduction Hitchcock was one of the few directors whose name regularly appeared above the title, but this was as much a reflection of the fact that his name tended to guarantee a particular genre of entertainment as it was a testament to his cultural status. The Cahier critics used the theory principally to reassess the work of major American directors whose output had often been neglected by cultural commentators because they plied their trade in the heathen, capitalist world of Hollywood. Few would now argue with the artistic claims they made for Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford or Hitchcock, although the manner in which they chose to assign auteur status, or withhold it, often seemed a matter of personal taste. Don Siegel and Sam Fuller were in, but John Huston was definitely out. The elevation of a critic’s idiosyncratic preferences to the point where they become orthodoxy is nowhere clearer than in the book The Films in My Life which collects together some of the critical writings of one of Cahier’s central figures, Franc¸ois Truffaut.3 Here Truffaut trips from Billy Wilder to Robert Wise, and from Joshua Logan to Sidney Lumet, with little sense of the different contexts from which these varied film-makers emerged, even crediting Wise with the skilful editing of Orson Welles’s, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) with no apparent awareness of his role in butchering Welles’s work on behalf of the studio that backed it. Among the directors Truffaut discusses there are just four British-born film-makers: Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Laughton and Norman McLaren. It is revealing to consider that Chaplin barely made any films in Britain, Hitchcock is best known for his Hollywood movies, Laughton’s only film as a director was made in America and McLaren’s most notable achievements were in Canada. Truffaut even manages to spell McLaren’s surname incorrectly. British directors fared particularly badly from the prejudices of the Cahier critics and their followers. Famously, in his book-length interview with Hitchcock, Truffaut dis- missed the merits of British cinema with barely disguised contempt, blaming an entire nation’s ‘incompatibility’ with the world of cinema on such disparate factors as ‘the English countryside, the subdued way of life, the stolid routine . the weather itself is anti-cinematic.’4 He had obviously never seen the opening of David Lean’s Oliver Twist (1948). Such attitudes are not far from the surface of Roy Armes’ survey A Critical History of British Cinema. Armes at least attributes the creative failings of various British film-makers in part to the nature of the production context in which they have had to struggle: ‘All the major directors of British cinema have had to find their own path between a degree of innovation which will render them unemployable and a con- formist mediocrity which will deprive their work of all interest.’5 Quite introduction 3 why such strictures don’t apply to other national cinemas remains unclear. Critical opinion within Britain itself has certainly not helped to alleviate this neglect of British directors. Notoriously, the influential film magazine Movie, which in the 1960s embraced the auteur theory wholeheartedly, could barely find any space for the work of British film- makers in its pages.

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